Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
You were looking for a reason to buy a PSP. This is it. Our biggest review to date.
Published: November 1, 2005
I mentioned it before, but one of the main reasons why most thought a full, console-quality GTA game wasn’t possible on the PSP was because of the streaming issue. Doing so drains the PSP battery like crazy and as a result, you’ll probably only get about three or so hours per charge out of the system with the sound and brightness cranked up.
Still, you are getting a full GTA game here, and it’s as massive (even a little larger, actually) than GTA3 was. The texture detail and framerate are noticeably lower than the console versions, but Rockstar was able to incorporate a bit of the reflection mapping from San Andreas into the cars here, and it’s a nice touch.
The addition of interiors isn’t quite as cool as it sounds, since it’s really just limited to safehouses (it would have been nice to just have a quicksave option that refilled your health), but you do get a nice sense that you’re moving up to bigger and better hideouts as you progress through the game, and it does allow for some simple costume changes.
The audio, aside from the superlative radio work, is pretty fair. The sound effects are clean, but there’s a slight bit of crackle and fuzziness on the vocal recordings, likely due to all the compression put into cramming as much audio as the game has onto a UMD. It’s a remarkable achievement, but not without a few very minor quibbles.
I haven’t even gotten into the host of multiplayer features, but we’ll save that for a second, smaller review; you don’t need a 20 page review telling you what I’m going to tell you now: buy this game. If you don’t have a PSP, you will not find a better reason to get one. I can’t stress enough how awesome this experience is, and if you’re old enough to own the game, you honestly should.
There’s more stuff packed into the game to play after you’ve beaten it than there is in the main story mode, from the usual hidden packages and taxi missions to a handful of extra goodies like noodle deliveries, car and bike salesman gigs, races, unique jumps... that’s it, I’m going back to the game.
